The present disclosure relates to acoustic streaming fluid injectors for inkjet printers, drug delivery devices, and screening devices for drug discovery and DNA sequencing, among other applications.
Inkjet printing is rapidly becoming an increasingly important technology. Aside from consumer market, it is currently used in industrial printing, 3-D printing for rapid prototyping, circuit board printing, LCD and OLED display production, and a number of other industries. New applications of the technology for diagnostics and drug discovery industry are being investigated.
Currently there are two major technologies used in ink-jet printing, thermal and piezoelectric. The thermal design, commonly used in consumer ink-jet printers utilizes the production of bubbles by heating an electrode to eject a droplet of water out of a nozzle. The main disadvantage of this technology is that it works only with water as a solvent. The piezoelectric design more commonly used in commercial printers utilizes the piezoelectric diaphragms that change the volume of the chamber. The main limitations of this design are the price, printing speed, and the size of the droplets.
The present disclosure addresses one or more deficiencies in the prior art.